Appendix A – The Glossary 15

Visa: This denotes an official counterfoil document that a visa office abroad issues and places in a person’s passport to show that the individual has met the prescribed requirements for admission to Canada as a temporary resident. A temporary resident could be a visitor, a student or a worker. The counterfoil refers to a specially designed sticker on which missions abroad print visa information. Canadian visas typically include:

Temporary Resident Visas (TRVs), which also go by the name of visitor visas and,

Permanent Resident Visas (PRVs)

At missions abroad, controlled documents typically comprise counterfoils and seals. Officers issue these together as visas. It is worth mentioning that counterfoils denote the documents on which missions print visa information. Similarly, seals refer to documents that the officers affix over counterfoils when they place them in the applicants’ passports for the prevention of any tampering.

Visa Application Centre (VAC): These centres typically provide administrative support services to applicants concerning the submission of their applications. The primary role of Visa Application Centres (VACs) lies in receiving visa applications, ensuring that they are complete and to securely transmit these to the respective visa offices for further processing. Visa Application Centres (VACs) are useful in countries or regions where there are few or no visa offices. It is worth highlighting that they play no role in the decision making process. As such, they are expressly forbidden to provide any visa related advice to applicants. All decisions on applications will usually be made by visa officers at the visa office. In addition, Visa Application Centres (VACs) do not represent the Government of Canada either.

Visa Office (or Mission or Canadian Visa Office): This refers to a Government of Canada office at a Canadian embassy, high commission or consulate outside Canada at which officers process the applications for visas and permits for foreign nationals, prior to issuing the visas. For more details, refer to the definitions of the terms ‘Embassy’, ‘High Commission’ and ‘Consulate’.

Visa Officer: This refers to a person designated by the Minister for assessing and making decisions on temporary or permanent residence applications presented by foreign nationals.

Visiting and Exchange Students: Visiting students refer to students at a foreign institution (home institution) who attend a post-secondary Canadian institution (host institution) for a specified period (not a full degree or program) with the intent of transferring the credits earned at the host institution back to their home institution. Such visiting students will typically pay fees to the host institution. Exchange students will attend a host institution in Canada. They will not pay any tuition fees to their host institution. This is because an exchange agreement between the home and host institutions will cover the fees for these students.

Visitor Visa (or Tourist Visa): This refers to an informal term that people use for a Temporary Resident Visa (TRV). For more details, refer to the definitions of the terms ‘Single Entry Visa’, ‘Temporary Resident Visa (TRV)’ and ‘Multiple Entry Visa’.

Vocational Training: This denotes a preparation for a specific occupation in industry, agriculture or trade. This training could typically include technical, organisational and basic skills training. It could typically be offered via:

On-the-job programs

Unions in conjunction with businesses

Community colleges or universities in conjunction with a specific industry and,

Private career colleges

Volunteer: This refers to people who, by their own free will, contribute time, energy, resources and / or talent to an organisation, without receiving any payment for this service.

War Crime: The examples of war crimes or crimes against humanity could include:

Execution type murders

The destruction of people’s property

Forcing people out of their homes and / or country

Genocide i.e. the killing of a group of people based on their ethnicity, race, religion and cultural backgrounds and,

Human rights violations

Widowed: This refers to a situation where a person’s spouse has died and where that person has not remarried or entered into a common-law relationship.

Work Permit: This refers to a document issued by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) that authorises a person to work legally in Canada. It typically sets out conditions for the worker such as:

The type of work that the workers can do

The employer that the workers can work for

The place where the workers can work and,

The duration for which the workers can work

Working Holiday Visa (Working Holiday Program): For more details, refer to the definition of the term ‘International Experience Canada’.

Years of Schooling: This denotes the number of years that a person has spent in school. Generally used for statistical purposes, this figure helps in determining the number of education points in the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) selection grid.